Pandora Files Ransomware – Remove Pandora Virus

What is Pandora virus?

Pandora appends its extra .pandora extension to the name of every encrypted file. For instance, a file named “photo.jpg” will be changed to “photo.jpg.pandora”. In the same manner, the Excel table named “table.xlsx” will become “table.xlsx.pandora”, and so on.

In every folder that contains the encoded files, a Restore_My_Files.txt file will be found. It is a ransom money note. Therein you can find information on the ways of paying the ransom and some other information. The ransom note most probably contains a description of how to purchase the decryption tool from the tamperers. That is it.

In the image below, you can see what a folder with files encrypted by the Pandora looks like. Each filename has the “.pandora” extension appended to it.

How did Pandora ransomware end up on my PC?

There are currently three most exploited ways for evil-doers to have ransomware acting in your digital environment. These are email spam, Trojan introduction and peer file transfer.

If you open your mailbox and see emails that look like familiar notifications from utility services providers, postal agencies like FedEx, web-access providers, and whatnot, but whose “from” field is unknown to you, be wary of opening those emails. They are most likely to have a malware file attached to them. Therefore, it is even riskier to download any attachments that come with letters like these.

Another option for ransom hunters is a Trojan virus scheme². A Trojan is a program that gets into your PC pretending to be something else. Imagine, you download an installer of some program you want or an update for some software. However, what is unpacked turns out to be a harmful program that corrupts your data. As the update wizard can have any name and any icon, you have to make sure that you can trust the source of the files you’re downloading. The best thing is to trust the software companies’ official websites.

As for the peer-to-peer file transfer protocols like BitTorrent or eMule, the threat is that they are even more trust-based than the rest of the Internet. You can never know what you download until you get it. Our suggestion is that you use trustworthy resources. Also, it is reasonable to scan the directory containing the downloaded items with the antivirus as soon as the downloading is done.